


Doppelganger

by christ_Just_Let_Me_Say_Fuck



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Hotel
Genre: Death, Deeply deeply self-indulgent, F/M, Fix-It, Ghosts, Matrimonial Issues, Serial Killers, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:41:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22151203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/christ_Just_Let_Me_Say_Fuck/pseuds/christ_Just_Let_Me_Say_Fuck
Summary: There are two John Lowes in the Cortez these days.
Relationships: Alex Lowe/John Lowe, John Lowe/"Hypodermic" Sally McKenna
Kudos: 7





	Doppelganger

DOPPELGANGER

There were two John Lowes in the Cortez these days.

Nobody really questioned it. Compared to the weirder shit that had happened in the dim corridors of the old hotel, the doppelganger of a dead serial killer was practically mundane. For a while, many of the hotel’s permanent residents weren’t even aware of the new addition to their family of lost souls. Sometimes a new arrival, blissfully unaware of their inevitable and likely highly painful fate, would spot him out of the corner of their eye, standing alone in one of the hotel’s many dark corners. Iris had stumbled across him in the foyer on Devil’s Night once, lurking near the main doors, his shoulders slumped and his arms hanging loosely by his sides like a lazy drunk. It was admittedly unusual to see the guy down here by himself – Lowe had more than enough reasons to avoid unnecessary interactions with the Cortez’s ghosts, what with his limited visiting hours and all – but it was hardly worth commenting on.

Not until the main doors opened and another John Lowe walked in, passing within ten steps of himself.

Neither of them acknowledged the other. Not even a sideways glace. They never did, Iris saw, after a night of careful watching. There didn’t seem to be any sort of change in John’s behaviour at all. He visited his family, nodded to Liz when he caught her eye, was stiffly polite when the end of his yearly stopover rolled around. On the rare occasions when he and his newly independent reflection shared a room, his eyes carelessly slid past the man. Not the guilty, evasive glance of a liar; John genuinely didn’t appear to register himself.

His wife, though…she saw. Usually while herding Holden from room to room. This new John had a habit of passing through walls that unnerved her more than it should, here at the Cortez, but there was something awful in how purposefully he moved, like a hammer being swung towards a nail. In those split seconds before he disappeared again, Alex recognized John Lowe, and knew with a solid inexplicable certainty that this was not her husband. She had been talking to him only minutes before, or she knew he was in a room three stories above them, or – most days - her John simply wasn’t in the hotel at all. There was something else, too, something less rational and more intuitive. Once, in some distant dream time before any of this fucked-up shit had happened to her family, Alex could remember going to the zoo with Scarlett and Holden. Holden’s favourite part had been the reptile house, and so that was where they always went first, even though Scarlett said she was scared of the place. And Alex remembered the huge, glass-lined pit where the crocodiles were kept. She remembered how the biggest crocodile would lounge with its tail and back legs hidden in the murky water, its eyes cold and fixed and its cruel jaw hanging slightly, entirely immobile apart from the odd twitch of the limb or flick of the tail. Then, just as you started to believe that you weren’t really looking at a living thing at all, just a plastic model, the keepers would arrive in the pen and that great wedge-shaped head would swing towards the sound, all speed and purpose and terrible hunger.

She had always jumped back a little when the still, silent animal had suddenly shifted its weight and lunged towards the proffered carcass, no matter how many times she had seen it happen before. The way this…other man moved reminded her of that. So did the way his eyes seemed to focus on something in the middle distance that only he could see. Holden never ran to him when he saw him, instead shrinking back to her side as if a cold breeze had blown between them. That was enough, really. Alex could come to terms with the fact that there had been things her husband had done in the Cortez that she would never know about – things he would never reveal to her, things she didn’t want revealed. She thought she could accept that. After all, hadn’t she done some less than exemplary things herself in order to keep her family – to keep her son – safe? But knowing that there was a darker side to her husband was one thing. It was something else entirely to see him like this, to watch him brush their son aside like he wasn’t even there, to see the cold glassy hunger in his eyes and to understand that there had been – was? - a part of John Lowe that was entirely unapologetic about the five years he had spent away from his family, a part which viewed Holden as a vague shadow, unimportant when compared to that burning buzzing _need_ that kept him upright and moving. It was the part that had sometimes scared her over the dinner table as he talked in a low, flat voice about his work.

It was an awful thing to admit, but Alex couldn’t help feeling relieved when another day passed without a sighting of the shade of the man she was meant to love. It meant admitting that she didn’t love her husband unconditionally, that there were parts of him she was happy to see banished to the darker corners of the Cortez. When John – _her_ John - visited on Devil’s Night, Alex would watch him play on the floor with Holden and try her best to forget the other man who walked the corridors. It was awkward enough to realize that she didn’t mind spending only one night a year with her husband, that she didn’t really miss him for the most part…in fact she almost preferred it, now that she had Holden. But the more her mind lingered on the man outside (she refused to call him John), the more she knew that, no matter how much she loved to see John on his yearly visits, if he came through the door spattered with blood and told her to leave Holden and come with him, she wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t even consider it. Did that make her unfaithful? It was enough to drive Alex insane, if she wasn’t already. She had already gone through this before, back in the dark days when Holden was gone and she could feel John floating away from her. For all intents and purposes, she had her family back now. She should have moved beyond this sort of endless hand-wringing, but apparently there was no such thing as closure in the Cortez. Not for killers.

On one of her rare trips down to the bar, Alex had tentatively raised the topic with Liz. She suspected Liz had guessed what was going on. There was very little that went on in the Cortez that she didn’t know about one way or another.

“Yes, I’ve seen him about,” the owner of the Cortez said with a tight smile playing on her lips as she poured out a healthy measure of vodka. “Doesn’t say much, does he?”

Alex made a noncommittal gesture and picked up her glass of soda water and lime. “Do you see him down here a lot?”

“For time to time,” Liz replied, looking at her from over the rim of her glass. “Are you worried about him?”

Alex had been at the Cortez long enough to be able to tell when Liz was being deliberately evasive. _He comes down here a lot, doesn’t he? He comes down here when he’s finished someone and dumped the bodies, and you don’t want me knowing and getting on your case for not telling you, right? Because he doesn’t come down here alone, I’m guessing. You’ve seen him with her, haven’t you?_

Alex slammed the brakes on that particular train of thought. That could lead nowhere good, and besides, she did want Liz’s opinion on this unique situation.

“He’s not…bothering us,” she admitted, leaning forward slightly. “It’s just…Christ, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening.”

Liz tilted her head in acknowledgment. “It is a bit of an odd case, I will admit that. Occasionally you see something like it in the particularly deluded ones, but it usually wears off once they realize they’re dead. Or get tired running into themselves in the bathroom.” Liz smirked at her little joke. “Doesn’t seem like the case with your man. And I’ve seen our…new friend show up whenever the mood takes him, Devil’s Night be damned. I’m sure you have too, by now.”

Alex was done beating about the bush. “Do you have any idea what the fuck is going on with him?”

Liz smiled a genuine smile for the first time since their conversation started. “You’ve come to the wrong person for a close analysis of this shit, sweetheart. I was never really involved with March’s little killer obsession. I had…other things on my mind at the time. But I’d say it’s something like…like an echo.”

“An echo. Really?”

“Of course. Surely by now you realize what sort of place the Cortez is?” When Alex didn’t reply, Liz continued blithely. “It’s hard for things to fade away completely here, Alex. And John was here for a hell of a time. Shit, he probably saw more of this hotel in those five years than I managed in my whole life. All those nook and crannies, every secret passage. Because he got the James March tour, see? He’s been deep inside the Cortez, right into the veins of this place. I’m not saying the hotel turned your sweet cinnamon roll of a husband into a scary murderer overnight, but he was reborn here, sure as I was. The Cortez really doesn’t want to let your husband go, honey…or at least, it wants to hang onto some bits of him, certain chunks of his psyche, you might say. Haven’t you talked to him about it?”

“Well, yeah.” That hadn’t been the most fruitful conversation. John had insisted that he had no control over the other man, and even denied being able to see him most of the time. Alex believed him – had wanted to believe him – but had been left feeling even more adrift. If even John had no idea about what was happening, how could _she_ hope to understand? Even as sightings of her husband’s solemn reflection grew rarer, his phantom presence lingered uncomfortably in Alex’s mind. She knew, more than any parent, that what you didn’t know could hurt you; more importantly, it could hurt your child. Of course, she had no fears about John around Holden – but was this apparition really her John? Or was he something else, a puppet for some darker thing that pulsed like a heartbeat through the walls of the hotel? Alex didn’t know. All she knew was that Holden was frightened of the man who looked like his father. As a mother, she had to share some of that fear…even if it meant fearing her own husband.

Alex, in short, was approaching her wit’s end, and it seemed some malign influence watching over her that night decided to add the single ingredient that would tip her over the edge. As she was getting up to leave, the muffled sound of footsteps and scraping chairs alerted her to new arrivals at one of the booths, but Alex was simply too deep in thought to care, still mulling over Liz’s words. It wasn’t until she glanced up and saw the look on Liz’s face that she turned, knowing before she had gotten halfway what she would see behind her.

Sally, of course. She had almost forgotten the other problem on her mind, but Sally McKenna didn’t take kindly to being ignored by anyone. Alex had seen that all too clearly. She remembered it so clearly, the ghost towering over them in the foyer, teeth bared and fresh hellfire glowing in her eyes. John had warned her about his former accomplice, but Alex had already sensed in Sally a threat to her family stronger than any run-of-the-mill jilted lover. If the other man, the man who lived by his bloodstained interpretation of the Ten Commandments, was reptilian in his slow, deliberate movements and unblinking stare, then his accomplice was a hyena, right down to the wild hair, the teeth bared and bloody and ready to snap, the unpredictable bursts of rough, cackling laughter that didn’t express anything like genuine mirth or pleasure but some sort of angry, desperate hunger. Alex saw even less of Sally than she did of the other John, but that didn’t comfort her any. Everyone else in the hotel seemed to write Sally off in some way; even Iris tended to shrug. “She has the devil’s mischief in her, right enough, but there’s not much you can do but stay out of her way.” As if Sally was a mildly irritating but ultimately harmless pest, on par with a rat infestation or a bin-rummaging fox. _Devil’s mischief, indeed_. The consensus in the Cortez seemed to be that Sally was dangerous, but manageable – she didn’t have the stamina, or indeed the attention span, for the long hunt. But Alex could sense a terrible scavenger’s instinct in the other woman. Any moral code or regard for life had been left abandoned in the same alley she had died in, and the only thing stopping her from killing anyone else in the Hotel was her own disinterest. Sally might not bother targeting specific individuals much anymore, and tended to stay away from potential victims in groups (like the dog she was), but Alex knew that, if Sally thought she could get away with it, or if the urge took her, if she thought she would get something out of it – if she _really_ wanted it - Sally would take on just about anyone. She had it in her to kill Alex – she had it in her to kill _Holden._

Therefore, the fact that Sally was these days so often in the company of John Lowe Mk.II was perhaps a blessing, from a purely practical perspective. She spent most of her time entirely uninterested in Alex or Holden, and presumably kept the other man occupied as well. But Alex hated it, hated seeing her with him, hated seeing them like she was seeing them now, huddled in a corner booth with Sally draped like a scarf over the second John Lowe, their hands smeared and dripping red. Completely understandable, of course. Five years was, as Liz noted, a hell of a time, and Alex would be lying if she said there wasn’t some good old-fashioned jealousy in the mix. But it wasn’t what she hated most. What she hated most was what she was seeing right now – a slight softening of those distant blue eyes, a small but genuine smile twisting the contours of his face. That was it. That was what kept Alex up at night, the thing that made her blood boil. Seeing her husband – some part or memory or twisted echo of him, but still somehow him – ignore her and their son as though they meant less than nothing, only to bestow what was left of his soul on…this creature, several steps below a whore and only one step above an animal. The knowledge that she, Alex, had one night a year to spend with her husband, while this painted, slavering _bitch_ got her very own version completely free, always available. A cheap knock-off with parts missing, perhaps, but clearly it did the job for her. What had she done to deserve that reward, awkward and unsettling as it was? Aside from almost killing John, _definitely_ killing countless others, and terrorizing Alex’s family, absolutely jack shit.

Alex’s thoughts were screaming as they flashed across her mind, and perhaps they were somehow loud enough for Sally to hear; more likely, though, that the woman simply had some sort of sixth sense for misery. Either way, the dead woman tilted her head away from its resting place on the other man’s shoulder, locking eyes with Alex in a heartbeat. Alex had just enough time to register surprise at how shockingly black those eyes were, pupils blown wide and shrouded in eyeshadow like the eye sockets of a skull, before Sally, in one smooth motion, pulled her lips back from her teeth in a sick snarl, turned her head back to her John, and sank her teeth deep into his earlobe.

The effect was as immediate and shocking as the snap of a shark’s jaw. The Ten Commandments Killer surged forward, one hand shooting forward to clench around the junkie’s pale neck, then swung her savagely downward, his momentum slamming the pair of them onto the table. His other hand had disappeared under the ragged hem of Sally’s dress, groping and pawing.

Alex didn’t need to see this. She turned and made for the safety of her room, trying to block out the cacophony of thuds, grunts, and howling, joyous laughter that echoed behind her. Dimly she could make out Liz’s voice chiding the rampaging duo, like a babysitter trying to deal with a pair of particularly unruly six-year-olds. “Oh for God’s sake, you two, don’t you have a fucking room to go to? What do you think this place is, a brothel? Don’t answer that, Sally, I’m not in the fucking mood.”

Alex checked on Holden the minute she got back. He was curled under the covers, his beautiful blond hair spread like a halo around his head. Some of the tightness in Alex’s chest loosened as she watched him shift a little in his sleep before settling back down. She wouldn’t be going back to the bar for a good while. She had Holden, and that was all she needed. She would never let him go. Alex drifted off to sleep with that thought held firmly in her mind, her slumber punctuated by nightmarish images of a dark, ragged silhouette snatching her son from his bed, his terrified cries mingling with a familiar, rattling laugh.

*

Several months later, and Devil’s Night was well and truly underway at the Hotel Cortez. It was a particularly stormy night, and the sound of the rain and wind beating on the windows was almost deafening. Alex Lowe had no trouble hearing her husband, however, as she was lying down beside him on their bed.

“Holden told me he doesn’t see the other Dad around here as much anymore. That true?”

Alex shifted to look him in the eyes. “Yeah, actually. Did he tell you that on his own or did you ask him?”

“I asked.” John sat up against the headboard, a serious look on his face. “Listen Alex, I know how much this worries you. You shouldn’t have to hide that just because of me.”

Alex exhaled, laughed lightly. “John, it’s OK. Holden is right, we don’t see much of…him, anymore. And I believed you the first time we talked about this. I know you don’t have anything to do with this, whatever’s happening.”

John sighed and sat up straighter against the headboard. “Yeah, I don’t doubt that. Look, Alex…I just want you to know that I would never hurt you. Do you understand? Not ever. Not even when I was spending all of my time here, the thought of hurting you or Holden never even crossed my mind. Not once. Whatever it is that’s happening here…it’s not a threat to you, to us. To our family. That’s the only thing I know.”

Alex met his eyes and smiled. “Don’t worry, John, I’m not worried about it anymore. You’d be surprised at what you can get used to. Does it worry you, not really knowing what’s happened to yourself?”

John’s gaze shifted to the doorframe, his eyes thoughtful. Eventually he spoke. “No. As long as nothing’s happened to you, I can live with it. I mean, Christ, considering the shit that’s happened in this place, honestly I’m surprised this is all that’s fucked up. But…you and Holden are safe. That’s all that matters.”

Alex smiled against John’s chest. She couldn’t have put it better herself.

*

That had been several hours ago. Now it was pitch black in Room 64, and John Lowe was expecting a visit from himself.

He was feeling only slightly guilty about his exchange with Alex. He hadn’t lied to her, exactly, but he hadn’t shared everything with her either. Then again, what would he say to her? That there was no ‘other’ John, not really? That he remembered everything, and regretted none of it? That wasn’t likely to go down well – and what good would it do them, at the end of the day? It was better this way. So, so much better. All the guilt and rage and pain could be let out somewhere else, without any risk to his family, while he spent what time he had left with them. Where was the problem with that?

Rocking back and forth slightly on his heels, John gazed into the bathroom mirror as his thoughts swirled slowly. He had been entirely honest with Alex about one thing; he really did have no idea how or why he had been gifted – if that was an appropriate term – with this hotel-exclusive doppelganger. He was no medium, but after several years hanging out at the Cortez, he had a pretty good grasp on how ghosts worked. He _was_ one, for fuck’s sake. This wasn’t how the afterlife worked for people like him. So why did this split-self feel so right?

Because he needed it. Oh God how he needed it. Those first nights at the Cortez, with James, with Sally – he had felt free, he had felt real. Sometimes he thought that if he had waited any longer to let it all out, he would either have snapped or faded away completely, turned into the shell of some other man. Here, in the Cortez, things were easier. So much easier. John smiled, satisfied by the thought. After all, why shouldn’t the Cortez reward him like this? He had done more for the place than any man who wasn’t named James Patrick March, after all.

It was about time now. Sitting down on the edge of the bath, John waited for himself.

He didn’t have long to wait.

John Lowe watched himself appear, entirely without fanfare, through the far wall of the tiled room. As always, there was no light of recognition in his eyes, but his face was pale and sharp and open – alert and undeniably human. Undeniably him. John smiled, as if greeting an old friend.

“Ready for Devil’s Night, big boy?”

It was like a ritual. He could almost hear Sally’s voice echo in his own, almost smell the sweet pungency of blood freshly spilled. It was nearly time to go dormant again. But why let the Ten Commandments Killer have all the fun? John Lowe had been there every step of the way. He deserved to at least tag along for another year’s ride, until time gave him strength enough to split off from himself again.

And as he sank into the comforting coldness of his own mirrored mind, John felt all regret fade. For hadn’t it always been like this? The Ten Commandments Killer had been his safe shell, his peaceful retreat. It was only right that he should find shelter in that persona even in death.

John Lowe opened his eyes to find himself alone in the dark room. Without sparing a glace towards the room where his wife and child slept, he walked through the same wall through which he had entered, and into the waiting, welcoming darkness of the hotel where he had been born.

Sally was lurking out there, somewhere, waiting for him. Maybe he could find James, too. They were fun.

It was Devil’s Night, after all. And what was Devil’s Night without a bit of fun?


End file.
